David Edgar's website

Is it weird that my “proud to be Australian” moments are almost exclusively because of something like this https://www.livescience.com/animals/birds/australian-trash-parrots-have-now-developed-a-local-drinking-tradition

Irony may have been killed today. I was sent a trolley problem variant generated by an LLM

I put it to you that any question that starts with 'Is it malicious compliance….' can be answered before going any further.

"Given we’re in WeWork and given they are forcing return to office for everyone, and given booking meeting rooms costs money after you exhaust your free points, is it malicious compliance to start booking meeting rooms for all the meetings we used to do online?"

Every weekday at 17:00 I sit down on the couch in my home office and spend the next five minutes very carefully, very very precisely ensuring there is an even distribution of pats and attention between both fomo beasts.

• dogs

There are two or three people out there who .. look, I get it, You are angry about the genocide the government and military of Israel are carrying out. Me too. And you don't see how anybody can enjoy the Eurovision thing, which is clearly a celebration of nationalism as well as Pan-Europeanism, because there is Israeli participation. I definitely acknowledge your point. I definitely acknowledged it the second time. And the third time. It was around the fourth time I started realising. It isn't really about Israel and Gaza. It's about you. People differ about the way they can register their disagreement with Israel committing genocide. Fucking get over it.

As the days grow colder the four-legged cat will come into my office, sit on the arm of the couch, and glare silently until I re-assemble Fort Ti-cat-deroga.

• cat

Political Compass sent me a post-election survey and one of the questions was something like how much did I enjoy the election. And I used to find the whole thing fascinating, and probably would have answered "Very" once upon a time. But then I became radicalised and disenfranchised. One of - by no means the greatest, but one of them for sure - causes for that was the insistence by deeply unserious people that I should take their performative hissy seriously. Their sky-is-falling caterwauling for the benefit of the rusted-ons and the brokens, duly reported on by the media that tied itself to this stupid circus. Fucking thirteen year olds would look at the carry on about Comey's "8647" photo and go "Aren't you being a bit childish?"

Nevertheless, 86 47. Preferably into the Sun, but the sea will suffice.

• media
• politics

Careless People, Sarah Wynn-Williams

You've probably heard of it. NGL I mostly read it because Facebook Striesand'd it by getting an injunction against the author to prevent her publicising it. Brilliant work there to keep it obscure. A memoir of the author's time working Facebook. In (mostly) episodic chapters it tracks her initial enthusiasm for the possibilities of connectivity souring as the leadership reveals their true faces. You can taste the residual animus in the final chapters, particularly the epilogue. Boy howdy did she earn her right to that though. I believe her. Come for the sly anecdotes about Zuckerberg, Sandberg, and Kaplan told with that kind of amused detachment New Zealanders seem to have. Stay for the self-reflection on ideals being lost... in that same amused detachment.

Murderbot Diaries, Martha Wells I started re-reading All Systems Red because of the TV adaption about to start (mid-May 2025, I believe). Actually I re-read the series on the regular. It's the competence porn. It's the little bit of identification with Murderbot. Its the tempo of the stories. On Book 6 now.

• books
• fiction
• non-fiction
• review

It’s long been known that the most significant problem America has with prisons is that there are not enough Americans in them. Trump is thinking too small - as usual. Don’t stop at re-opening Alcatraz. Let’s make that whole country a prison.

I like the democracy sausage thing because it doesn’t feel like astroturf, it’s a bit of a laugh and one of the few things Australia likes about itself without a hint of cringe. Also, it wasn’t that long ago we had people discussing doing away with compulsory voting and the democracy sausage is a bulwark against that. Whatever else you can say about Australia, at least our political establishment isn’t actively invested in preventing people from voting.

I like the democracy sausage thing because it doesn’t feel like astroturf, it’s a bit of a laugh and one of the few things Australia likes about itself without a hint of cringe. Also, it wasn’t that long ago we had people discussing doing away with compulsory voting and the democracy sausage is a bulwark against that. Whatever else you can say about Australia, at least our political establishment isn’t actively invested in preventing people from voting.

Democracy Sausage eaten; American mustard acknowledged but politely refused and mocked behind its back. Probably a bit to on the nose for the fundraisers (the RFS), but I would definitely have eaten a potato scallop if there were any on offer in anticipation of his slice and dicing when the knives come out tonight.

Will we ever encounter a moment where Peter Dutton does not choose to plead for Australians to despise other Australians? Was he like this when he was a cop?

There was a set of books by an organisation called The School of Life that I read a few of. They'd kind of fit into this, although the only one I actually own, [Eva Hoffman How to Be Bored

(https://booko.com.au/w/7760978/How-to-be-BoredThe-School-of-LifebyEva-Hoffman-The-School-of-Life) was 141 pages.

Also, I tend to think fantasy and sci-fi fiction went completely the wrong way. Doorstopper tomes to satisfy the weirdest of the fans. The Elric books were 100 pages or so and they were better than almost everything else published for the next 20 years (at least)

• books
• fiction
• ideas
• non-fiction
• philosophy

A set of (lightly colourised?) photographs of Japan from 1860 - 1900. The colourisation...detracts a bit, I think. Gives a slightly less real feel. Some of them I paused and wondered if that image was actually illustration. Or even LLM generated.

• history
• Japan
• photographs

Apparently I've mellowed since last election, no longer right up in the corner.

The Rhuidean episode of Wheel of Time was the only good episode of all three seasons. It was actually really good.

So I expect tonight they will reveal Aes Sedai don’t have toilets, they just go to Tel’Aran’Rhiad and shit in a corner.

The Five Stages Of Being A Macchiato Drinker

1. Suprised upon first sip; they actually made a piccolo.
2. Knowing when picking it up that it is too heavy; its a piccolo.
3. Knowing which barista thinks a piccolo is a macchiato and going to another cafe.
4. Carrying A8 sized infographics explaining the difference between macchiato and piccolo (and cortado).
5. Switching to short blacks.

• annoyed
• coffee

In between sessions of Civilisation VII^† I have managed to do some minor meta work on this here blog. NGL, in part because when I did post the blogging questions post, it revealed some bugs and my friend Kris was quite condescending about it.

So now I have date archives:

• Yearly
• Monthly
• Daily
• Tags

Also did some minor fixes to posts added via the micropub endpoint. I misunderstood the spec for the content and name properties, so was creating items without any actual body text. Whoops.

Next step, for full 2000s website-ing, a blogroll

^† And, as it turns out, Humankind which I didn't really enjoy at first but have figured it out and am putting hours in.

• meta

Someone mentioned Elon’s stupid email asking public servants what they had done in the previous week during a management call this morning.

So I referenced the Luigi Mangione joke: Elon asked for five bullets and Luigi said “I’m on it”.

Turns out it can be hard to tell the difference between a crowd not dangerously online who don’t get the joke, or a crowd that thinks the joke is in poor taste.